Happy Birthday DudaMobile!

By Itai Sadan on April 23, 2012

Happy birthday to us! Today DudaMobile turns three-years-old. First, I would like to thank everyone who has supported us throughout the years: the Duda team and their families, our investors, partners and most of all, you…our users. We have set out on a bold mission to make the web mobile-friendly, and with 1.5 million sites on the Duda platform, it feels like we are on the way.

I thought a blog post about our history and some of the most-asked questions would be fitting for our birthday, but first, take a look at Team Duda when we launched in 2009….

How did you come up with the name DudaMobile?

Over the years, there have been different explanations to the origin of the name Duda. I kind of like leaving it as a bit of a mystery as to where the original idea for the name came from, so here are the common explanations in no particular order. I recommend you just pick the one you like most:

Sounds like do-the-mobile (Du-Da-Mobile)

Duda is the nickname of a relative who lives in Brazil. (His full name is Eduardo.)

Duda in Hebrew means crave.

The Duda team loves The Big Lebowski and its main character, The Dude.

Where in the world is DudaMobile located?

In the three years since Amir and I started DudaMobile, our offices have moved quite a bit. Initially, we worked from our homes in Palo Alto. Later, I moved to Mountain View and formed the first Duda office in my garage. (Yes…we were a true garage startup for a while.)

In June 2010 Amir moved to Israel to form the R&D team. The first office was in Ramat Gan, Israel then later moved to a very cool office in the center of Tel-Aviv.

Back in the U.S., when Dennis joined me in February 2011, we immediately set out to look for a new office for the California team, settling at Dave McClure’s 500 Startups (500 Startups is not an investor in Duda; we just loved the great vibe there. Check out this video.) Just last month, the U.S. Duda team moved to Palo Alto, which is a space we all very much love!

We also have scooters here.

By the way, the office was designed by my brother, Dori Sadan, who also designed the Tel-Aviv office. Thanks, Dori!

Why is DudaMobile’s mascot a frog?

Well, its not just any frog, it’s a tree frog and his name is The Dude. Tree frogs are known to change color to adapt to their background, similar to how DudaMobile changes a website to adapt it to mobile.

As I was going through my files to write this blog, I found previous versions of our website that I thought would be interesting to share. This is how our first homepage looked like in March 2009. It was something we quickly put together with the help of our friend, Udi.

A newer version of our homepage was launched around May 2010 with a big improvement to the overall look-and-feel of the site.

Around July 2011, we launched our revamped website, which is what you see today. I hear rumors that the Duda marketing team is cooking up a new look that should come out in the next couple of month.

The past three years have been a whirlwind. Thanks everyone for the great support and looking forward to another great year!